Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if it takes off it needs constant marketing. If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll see that marketing costs are way higher than development and mai…
Strong marketing plan is true, but not accurate. I think a lot of people's marketing plan is to show it on HN/Product Hunt/Indie Hackers/Reddit entrepreneur groups, which is a horrible marketing plan. I think the marketing plan is part of the project design - you should have it before you build it. Are you targeting remote workers? That should be part of the UI, the features, etc. Do you plan on marketing via social…
There are plenty of reasons you need to throw money at it. For example, if the distribution is made by a third party (like Steam, if the project was a game), you're literally paying Steam to get your game distributed - and you could have a great game.
I don't think Google and Facebook are the best examples, because the internet was quite a different place when they launched.